Mark 1:9-15
One of the factory jobs I worked as a young man was on the DMS 350 production line at Lennox Industries in Columbus. We made the largest whole building air conditioning and heating unit Lennox manufactured at the time.
On this line, at another station, was a guy named Paul. To eat our lunches or take our breaks, just about all of us on the line, including Paul, would sit together, squatting close to the floor on the conveyor tracks on which we moved the sections of our HVAC units from workstation to workstation. Paul would mostly listen to the conversations that happened then and whenever a lull hit, take a drag on his cigarette and say knowingly, “Yeah. Live in hope. Die in despair.” (He was real ray of sunshine!)
Paul must have said that thirty times a day. He said it so many times that I came to think that he actually believed that that was the human story. He thought that all of us are condemned to live in hope and die in despair.
But our Gospel lesson for today assures us that you and I can live our lives by a different scenario. Instead of “live in hope, die in despair,” the scenario for the life of a Jesus Follower goes this way:
- live in the confidence that comes from God,
- face the wilderness with God’s help,
- emerge alive and whole for eternity.
First: Live in the confidence that comes from God.
Our Gospel begins with Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptizer. As a I pointed out a few weeks ago, John’s baptism at the Jordan River is different from the baptism that we undergo. John’s baptism was a symbol of repentance. The thousands who came to the Jordan to be baptized by John were symbolizing their intent to live repentantly, a life toward God and away from sin. It was an action done by the baptized.
But in the baptism instituted by Jesus, it’s God, not us, who is the primary actor. In our Baptism, God claims us as His own children for all eternity, end of story. We may choose to walk away from God, but God, on His part, will never revoke His claim of us as His children.
This, when you think of it, is foreshadowed in what happens at Jesus’ baptism by John. Unlike what happened with all the other people who came to the Jordan to declare their intention to live for God, God acts. Just as Jesus is emerging from the water, a voice booms out from heaven, “You are My Son, the Beloved; with you, I am well-pleased.”
At your baptism and to you, today, God says much the same thing: "You are My beloved child; with you, I am well pleased!"
When I was a college freshman, I asked to borrow my dad’s car so that I could go out on a date. Dad tossed the keys my way and as he did said, “Remember just one thing, Bub. She’s a person, too, Treat her with respect.”
Now, my dad had no idea who the girl was that I was going to take out. But he knew me. In that action and in those words, he reminded me that I was his son and no matter what temptations or tests might come my way, I could draw on that relationship and all that it entailed to be the person I had been nurtured and raised to be.
As Jesus was driven by the Spirit into the wilderness, He must have felt something like I felt as I slid in behind the wheel of my day’s car. He must have felt empowered by His Father’s love, ready to deal with the uncertainties of life, to do so with integrity, and to know that no matter what, He was still His Father’s Son. All who have been baptized in Jesus Christ can live in the confidence that comes from belonging to God!
Second: We can face the wilderness with the help of God.
It’s interesting to me that in our lesson, Mark says that after Jesus was baptized, “the Spirit [God the Holy Spirit, third person of the one God] drove [Jesus] into the wilderness” and that there, Jesus was tempted by Satan.
After reading about Jesus receiving the ringing affirmation of heaven while being baptized in the Jordan, you might expect to read next that people threw a ticker tape parade for Jesus and made Him king. Instead, Jesus goes into the wilderness. The word in the New Testament Greek for that place is eremos, literally, desert. Jesus went into a barren desert, surrounded, Mark says, by wild beasts. And He did that not necessarily because that was where He chose to go. Who, after all, would choose to go to a place like that? He was driven there by the Holy Spirit so that He could be tempted by Satan.
It hardly seems an honor befitting Someone just described by heaven as “[the] Son…the Beloved.” Jesus would have every reason to feel like the man in one of Abraham Lincoln’s jokes who had been tarred and feathered. Asked how it had felt, the man replied that if it weren’t for the honor of the thing, he would have been just as happy not to experience it.
From The Small Catechism, we good Lutherans have learned that God indeed tempts no one. But God will allow us to be subjected to temptation in order to test us.
Every time the devil, the world, or our sinful flesh tempts us to do anything that harms God, our neighbor, or the minds and bodies God has given to us, our faith is also tested and tempered. And every time we resist temptation, our faith is made stronger.
And, make no mistake about it, resisting temptaion isn’t a matter of willpower. Take a toy from a baby you need to bathe and you will see that we all are born with strong wills. We cave into temptation not because we lack willpower. Instead, we lack what someone has called “won’t power”: "Won't power is the capacity to say things like:
"I won’t eat that second piece of chocolate"
"I won’t gossip about my co-worker"
"I won’t be so critical of my child"
"I won’t cheat on the test"
"I won’t have sex with that person to whom I’m not married"
"I won’t laugh at someone’s bigoted joke"
...and then to make those resolutions stick!
But where does the power to do that come from? I once read the memoir of a pastor who, in his younger years, had a terrible weight problem. “I couldn’t stop eating,” he confesses. He felt horrible about it. "Here I was a pastor," he said, "telling people to treat their bodies as God’s temples. I told them to rely on God for their sense of self-worth and yet I was so wracked by self-doubt and self-pity that I used food to make me feel good, at least until I caught sight of myself in the mirror or stood on the scales." Then one night, this pastor was praying and crumpled on the floor in tears, telling God that he didn’t know what to do and that he needed God's help.
Within days, a caring parishioner showed up for a heart-to-heart talk with that young pastor. He taught him about nutrition and exercise. He got the medical attention he needed. Today, that pastor is in his eighties and you would never guess from looking at him that he had ever struggled with overeating. He took his first step to recovery when he admitted that he couldn’t control his own will and needed God's help.
Jesus survived the temptations and tests He endured in the wilderness because He knew how to do something we don't do very well in the United States. Jesus knew how to surrender. He relied on God and, our text tells us, “the angels waited on him.”
Whatever test and whatever temptation you face in life, God can and will send his angels to wait on you, to care for you, and to help your test become a testimony to God’s faithfulness.
Finally: Followers of Jesus can emerge from their tests more alive and more whole for eternity.
When Jesus came out of the wilderness, fortified by the help of God, strengthened in His dependence on the Father, He was ready to begin His ministry. Whatever tests or temptations you face, whatever wilderness you may be enduring, God stands ready to help you to say no to sin and say yes to the good news that Jesus has for us all, the good news that those who turn from sin and trust in Him have life with God forever.
Back when I worked in the factory, I wasn’t a Christian. I wish that I had been and that I could have developed a friendship with Paul and shared with him the good news that we have as followers of Jesus Christ. I would love to communicate to him today that as a Christian, I’m living a life scenario that includes the confidence that comes from knowing that I belong to Jesus Christ today and always, the awareness that Christ’s followers can face the wilderness no matter what, and the certainty that when we repent and trust in Christ, we look forward to eternity with God.
May you always remember that this is God’s scenario for your life!
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